UK Police Used Facial Recognition on Thousands During Summer Protests and Riots

by Didi Rankovich | Reclaim The Net

Police in the UK have used what appears to be an advanced facial recognition surveillance tool to identify and arrest several suspects in the wake of last summer’s unrest following the Southport stabbings, it has emerged.

The confirmation came from Northumbria Police, while reports say officers at the same time accessed the Police National Database to analyze more than 10,000 hours of CCTV footage.

That likely translates to a dataset containing images of scanned faces of a large number of people, ranging from thousands to possibly hundreds of thousands. And that is taking place despite the practice being “dangerously unregulated” in the UK, as Big Brother Watch is warning. Read Full Article >